Plane narrowly misses traffic as it crashes in Canada

TORONTO - A near-miss was caught on camera as a small plane careened across a busy roadway Tuesday and narrowly escaped hitting a vehicle.

The camera, which was mounted in a vehicle traveling along 16th Avenue, captured the moment when suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the plane skids across the road, narrowly missing the car's hood, and crashes into the tall grass across the street.

The crash happened just before 2 p.m. on the north side of Buttonville Airport in Markham. The nose and sides of the single-engine plane, a Cirrus SR 20, were heavily damaged.

The privately owned plane was taking off from runway 33, which faces north toward 16th Avenue. The plane did not rise fast enough, crashed through a fence and then skidded across 16th Avenue before coming to a stop on the other side of the street.

"Obviously there's a loss of control of the aircraft. I'm led to believe it's a male instructor and a female student in the aircraft. Thankfully there were no injuries," said Mitchell. Both walked away unharmed as did motorists on the road.

A crane was brought in to move the plane back over to the airport. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has now taken over the investigation.

A spokesperson for the TSB says the plane was doing a training maneuver called a touch and go. "So you come in to land, you basically do a landing and then you slow down and accelerate into a go, another takeoff. It's an easy way to get in a bunch of takeoff and landings if you're training. Standard maneuver, but in this case something went wrong," said Ewan Tasker, of the TSB.

The TSB says the instructor was in control of the plane at the time. They're trying to figure out why the plane did not gain altitude, leading to a very close call.